The HR Imperatives of Engagement, Organizational Well-Being and Fairness

The previous four chapters have focused on a series of important strategic performance drivers: innovation, customer centricity, lean management and the need to deliver HRM beyond the organization’s boundaries. We have been looking into the strategy of the organization — one of the major roles of HRM. These are all very important challenges that must shape the design, focus and attention of much of the HR architecture. They all help to show that HR is indeed needed. They all require that any HR function of value is highly networked and interconnected with both internal expertise and the external developments that shape each performance driver. But, of course, the HR function, as the intermediary between the organization and its people resources, has to cope with those external developments that are beyond the organization’s immediate control, but will serve as powerful drivers of employee behavior nonetheless. The focus on customer centricity outlined in Chapter 2 brings the outside into organizations under the guise of strategy and markets. But this outside world also impacts the internal labour market via the attitudes, mindset and culture of the workforce. And this in turn impacts engagement, which as we saw in Chapters 2 and 4 respectively, plays a crucial role in innovation and in lean management.